Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries) (7 page)

“I’d
have liked to see you try to ‘make me’ do anything,” I said. “That would have
been fun.”

He drank
his soda. “I really don’t know what I expected this conversation to sound
like,” he said, “but this wasn’t it.”

“Me
neither,” I said. “This is the longest we’ve talked in a while without you
offering me my badge back.”

“It’s in
my desk at the office. You want me to go get it?”

“No.”

“It
would be good for you,” he said. “At least you wouldn’t be sitting around here
all day.”

For a
moment I thought about telling him about my conversation with Anita Collins,
but I decided against it. He’d probably just find a reason to lecture me. “I’m
fine,” I said. “I could never go back, anyway. Somehow I think I’d fail the
background check now.”

He gave
me a contemplative look. “There are ways.”

“You
going to strong-arm someone?” I asked. “Blackmail the Chief if he says no?”

“The
Chief would take you back.”

“The
Chief
hates
me,” I said.

“Oh, he
does hate you, Nevada. He hates you worse than Hitler. But you close cases. He
likes
that
. With the media attention this copycat thing is getting, I
could swear you in tonight and he’d probably come in to give us medals at the
same time.”

He was
exaggerating about the medals, probably, but I also knew he was serious about
the job. I was a special case. If I’d wanted it, they’d find a way to make it
work. A tiny part of me did want it. The rational part of me knew it would be a
huge mistake.

“No,” I
said. He opened his mouth and I held up a hand. “Don’t tell me to think about
it. I have thought about it. I’ll probably think about it more. If I change my
mind, I’ll let you know.”

He
nodded. “Fine. I guess I’ll have to take that, for now. But swearing you in
isn’t the only way we could do it. We could probably appoint you as a
consultant.”

“A
consultant? What the fuck is that, Dan?”

“I don’t
know, all right? Damn it, Nevada, I just want you out of this room.”

“I’ve
got an interview at McDonald’s coming up,” I said. “I don’t have a ton of
experience with food, but I hear they’re not all that picky…”

“Shut
up, Nevada.”

He
finished his soda and belched under his breath. “One other thing.”

“Okay,
Columbo.”

He
ignored that. “Why did you tell Sarah not to investigate the copycat?”

“I
didn’t say that,” I said. “I said not to bother. It’s not the same thing. And
you know exactly why I said it. She already told you.”

“Yeah, I
know what she said.”

“You
thinking I’ve gone mental?”

“I
already know you’ve gone mental,” he said. “I was just wondering if you’re
going to go look for this guy yourself, and then sit on him until the Laughing
Man shows up to kill him.”

I raised
my eyebrows as if that had never occurred to me. “That’s not a bad idea,” I
said. “Hey, can you get me a copy of the case file? I just want it for no
reason.”

“Nevada…”

“I was
kidding,” I said. “I’m not looking for him. I’m not going to say I never
thought about it, but I’m not looking.”

“Why
not?”

“Because
say I did find him. You think I’m going to sit by while he kills someone else,
just because I’m hoping the Laughing Man is going to show up for me to shoot?
I’m mental, but I’m not
that
mental.” I thought about that. “You know,
that might not have been my answer three months ago. See? I’m making progress!”

Dan
stood up. “Go fuck yourself, Nevada,” he said.

“Love
you, too.”

“You
have my number,” he said. “Call me if you need to. I’ll check in on you in a
few days.”

“What
for?”

“Because
I care about you, you stupid shit.” He took his phone out of his jacket and
called for a cab. “Take care of yourself, all right?”

“You,
too.”

“Try not
to get in any trouble.”

“You
know me,” I said. “What could possibly happen?”

He
glanced at the Glock sitting on my bed. “Knowing you? Almost anything.”

Chapter 8

An hour
after Dan left I took the vodka out of the dresser and poured half an inch into
a cup. I sat with it while I watched part of a talk show, then poured it down
the drain. I wondered if the need to do that was ever going to go away. It
wouldn’t be the end of the world if it didn’t. It probably would be if I ever
drank it. If I went down that hole again there wasn’t much chance I was ever
coming back.

In the
morning I called Anita at the number she’d given me. “Hello?” she answered in
her grandmother voice.

“I’ll
take the job,” I said.

“I’m
glad to hear it,” she said. The grandmother voice was gone. “Let’s talk about
money.”

“We
don’t need to talk about money,” I said. “I doubt this is going to go anywhere.
If I’m wrong about that, you can pay me whatever you think it’s worth. Alan
Davies gave me a small fortune to find his daughter. I’m not going to need
money for a long time.”

“When
you find the murderer, I’m sure you won’t have any complaints about your
compensation,” she said. “I’ll make sure you never need money again.”

There
was more than one way to take that, but somehow I doubted Anita meant it in the
sense that I wouldn’t need money because she’d have me killed. Maybe that meant
my paranoia was improving. “I really do doubt I’m going to come up with
anything,” I said. “I’m going to start digging, though. You sure there’s
nothing you need to tell me before I start? If I’m going to uncover
embezzlement or affairs or something like that, you may as well tell me now.”

“Nothing
like that. My husband was as upstanding and true a man as you could ever want
to meet.”

I tried
not to snicker. That had been more than a little over the top. Then again, it
had sounded like she’d meant it. “Yeah, great. Look, I don’t
care
, all
right? Unless you were running a child slavery ring or something, I’m not going
to judge you. But if I find out you’ve lied to me, I’m going to be pretty
pissed about it. People say I’m not much fun when I’m pissed.”

“I have
no trouble believing that,” Anita said.

“All
right. I’m going to get in touch with Jason London and tell him I want the case
file. I’d rather nobody else found out I was looking at this; it might cause
some friction with the SDPD.” I paused. “What’s your connection to Jason,
anyway? He said you were a friend, but I don’t really see you two hanging out
in the same social circles.”

“No, we
don’t. One of my foundations provides supplemental healthcare costs for police
officers and firefighters.”

“And?”

“I paid
for his rehab.”

I
frowned. “I’d think the SDPD’s insurance would cover rehab.”

“It
doesn’t cover a month at Passages.”

I knew
the name. Passages was a rehab facility in Malibu that was known for treating
celebrities. I had no idea what it cost, but it was probably more than Jason
made in a year. “Okay,” I said. “I guess I can see that. Anyway, I’ll be in
touch.”

“Thank
you, Nevada. I appreciate this more than you’ll ever know.”

I hung
up. She’d never gone back to using her singsong voice with me. That had been
wise. I wondered how many people she let through that wall.

I was
hungry and cold pizza for breakfast didn’t sound appealing. I decided to text
Jason first, though.
Need case file for Collins. Going to take a look.
He replied two minutes later.
Already have it ready. Where to meet?
I
didn’t feel like having him over to my motel room, so I sent back the name of a
diner I knew near Old Town and went to the window for my usual routine of
looking for anything suspicious in the parking lot. As was also the usual,
nothing stood out. If the Laughing Man was watching me, he was doing it from a
distance. Then again, he probably knew my routines better than I did. They
never varied much. It wasn’t as if I’d taken Alan Davies’s money and started a
life of jet-setting around the globe.

The
diner was about half full when I went inside. I ordered an omelet and hash
browns and sipped a Diet Coke while I waited. Jason walked in just as the food
was coming to the table. He was wearing aviator sunglasses with a Tommy Bahama
shirt and shorts. “You look like a drug dealer,” I said when he got to the
table.

“I’m
buying half a ton of weed later,” he said, sitting down. “Some people
appreciate the look.”

“You
look like you’re in an action movie from the 90’s. Bruce Willis is going to
come in here and mess up your shit.”

“It’s
okay. I have a ninja army standing by.”

For a
moment I was shocked, then I laughed. “You aren’t usually funny,” I said.

He
shrugged. “I’m not usually in this good a mood. I appreciate you helping Anita
like this.”

“Helping
people is what I do,” I said. “I’m like…” I thought it over but couldn’t come
up with anything clever, “somebody who is always helping. Damn. That one got
away from me.”

“Nobody’s
perfect.”

I looked
him over. “So where are the files?”

“In my
trunk.” The waiter came by and Jason ordered two soft-boiled eggs and coffee.

“Why are
they in the trunk?” I asked. “I was expecting you to give me a thumb drive.”

He shook
his head. “Nothing that old has been digitized. You’re getting three dusty
boxes. That’s it.”

I
sighed. “Why can’t anything be easy?”

Jason’s
food came and he tucked into his soft-boiled eggs. “I meant it before. It’s
nice of you to help Anita.”

“It’ll
come to nothing, I’m sure. Have you looked at the files?”

“Yeah,
but it’s not my field. What do I know about bomb analysis? There were never any
serious suspects. They interviewed a couple aging hippies that were involved in
the anti-war scene.”

“Desert
Storm? Did that even count as a war?”

“No, the
Vietnam War. You’ve heard of it?”

“Yeah,
that’s the one that had to do with the impressment of sailors.”

Jason
stared at me. “What?”

“Forget
it. It was a War of 1812 joke. Actually, it was probably the
only
War of
1812 joke. Of course I’ve heard of Vietnam. Why were they interviewing old
hippies?”

He
shrugged. “The hippies had their share of radicals. One of them had been part
of a group that was suspected of putting a bomb under a police car in 1968.
They were fighting the power, or the pigs, or whatever people said back then.”

“I think
they were worried about ‘the man’ always getting them down.”

“That
sounds about right.”

“You
like any of them for it?”

“No.
It’s a pretty big stretch to go from anti-war to blowing up a guy that wanted
to make smart computers. I always figured it was a jealous lover, but Anita
says neither of them had a lover, and I believe her.”

“What’s
your take on Anita?”

Jason
sipped his coffee. “She’s a sweet old lady. Means the world to me. I assume you
know she helped me out?”

“Yeah.”
So Jason hadn’t seen through her mask, either. The woman was good. I wondered
if she’d fronted the rehab costs through her foundation because she wanted a
cop to owe her a favor. That actually seemed pretty likely. “What about the
bomb?”

“Pretty
standard pipe bomb. You could get the instructions to make one off the
Internet.”

“Or
whatever passed for the Internet in 1993, I guess.”

“Yeah. I
think I had CompuServe back then. You could probably find stuff like that in
the forums.”

“I
remember
The Anarchist’s Cookbook
,” I said. “I think that was just hype,
though, and not anything you could actually use.” I shrugged. “I have no idea,
really. I’ll probably have to do some research.”

“Or go
ask someone who makes bombs.”

I could
tell from his smirk that he’d been joking, but that wasn’t a bad idea. I knew
more than a few criminals, some in prison, and some not. A few of them owed me.

I put a
$20 bill on the table when Jason was finished eating and we went to his car, where
we transferred three file boxes from his trunk to mine. They were dustier than
I expected. “Somehow I doubt anyone’s looked at these in the last year,” I
said.

“Besides
me, probably not. And I didn’t spend a lot of time with them.”

I
slammed my trunk shut. “Anything else you can think to tell me?”

“Well, I
haven’t seen you at a meeting in a while.” He gave me a concerned look. “Are
you avoiding us for a reason?”

“No,” I
said. “I’ve just been really busy with not going.”

“People
worry about you.”

I shook
my head. “Jason, honestly, I don’t need to hear this. I didn’t say I’m done
with it, but I’m never going to be one of those people who goes to A.A. every
day. I don’t need it to stay clean. I have things to do besides talk about the
steps and the higher power and…whatever else. Tell everyone I said ‘hi’ if that
makes them feel better.”

“I will.
I just think people would rather hear it from you.”

“Then
they’re going to have to wait,” I said. “I have a case to work.”

Chapter 9

I’d told
Jason I had a case to work mostly because I wanted him to shut up, but I found
that saying it felt good. I finally had something to do. It was almost like
having a real job again. That was new. Actually, having a job while I was sober
was new. I’d been half in the bag while I’d been out looking for Alan Davies’s
daughter. It was a miracle I’d managed to find her. Well, it had been either a
miracle or dumb luck. Probably the latter.

Once I
got back to my motel I transferred the file boxes from the truck to my bed,
then sat down and watched two episodes of a Law & Order marathon. I didn’t
care for the show, but it beat Maury Povich or one of those court shows where a
television judge yelled at a couple idiots who were fighting over the price of a
bad haircut or something equally inane. I’d have been a terrible television
judge. It would have been too tempting to start smacking people around with the
gavel. Then again, doing that might have turned it into the highest-rated show
on television.

After
deciding I’d procrastinated long enough, I opened the first box of files and
started going through them. The first ones I read were specific to the bomb
itself. From the fragments that had been recovered, the investigators had
determined that it had been constructed from a piece of steel pipe about five
inches long and one inch in diameter. It had been triggered by a tripwire.
Photos of the burned-out car showed it had been a total loss. It was difficult
to believe anyone had made it out of that pile of twisted metal alive, but
Anita had.

I looked
over a list of the bomb’s components. Gunpowder had been the primary explosive
agent. I knew next to nothing about pipe bombs, and I’d never have thought
something that small could be so powerful. I’d figured it would have made a
loud bang, and maybe you’d lose a finger if you were holding it, like an overly
large firecracker.

A
curious notation included hydrogen peroxide among the bomb’s ingredients, but
someone had put a question mark next to it. A chemical formula had been
circled, but the string of H’s and O’s didn’t mean much to me. Hydrogen
peroxide didn’t make any sense, though. It was a liquid, and it certainly
didn’t explode. My parents had used it to clean cuts and scrapes I’d gotten
roughhousing with other kids when I’d been younger. How could it possibly have
been mixed with gunpowder? That had to be a mistake.

Full-color
photos of Anita’s naked body had been taken to catalog her injuries. Looking at
them was both awkward and horrifying. I wasn’t surprised to see that burns ran
down the entire left side of her body, but she’d been a lot worse than singed.
In places her skin had been charred black; third-degree burns that made her
look like she’d been put together from pieces of dead flesh like Frankenstein’s
monster. Her face had looked a great deal worse then, but plastic surgery and
time had obviously helped. There wouldn’t have been much all the surgeons in
the world could have done for her torso and leg, though. I wondered how long it
had taken her to heal. She must have been in the hospital for months.

I went
to my refrigerator to get a Diet Coke. The smell of leftover pizza wafted out
when I opened the door, making me instantly nauseous. There was very little
chance I was going to eat it now. After a moment’s deliberation over the guilt
I’d feel about it, I took the box outside and threw it in the dumpster. I hated
wasting food, but I didn’t want to smell it, or anything else, for a while.

A
photocopy of the warning note Adam Collins had been sent was in the files. It
was simple enough, written in all capitals and looking as if it had come off an
early laser printer. NO SMART COMPUTERS, it read. STOP NOW OR ELSE. That
suggested the bomber had had an agenda, but it could also be an attempt at
misdirection. The “or else” sounded juvenile to me, or maybe it was just
someone who wasn’t used to writing threatening notes. It wasn’t like that was something
people did every day.

The note
had been found on the windshield of the car that had been bombed a month before
the attack. That didn’t suggest a crime of passion. Whoever had sent it,
provided it
was
the bomber, had given Collins time to change his ways.
Apparently he didn’t believe in second warnings.

I
started looking through the suspect interviews. As Jason had said, the SDPD did
appear to have rounded up a bunch of ex-hippies that had been involved in
activist groups in the 1960’s. Most of them had gone on to academia. I read
through the two interviews that had been conducted with the suspected 1968
bomber first. Michael Lewis had been a chemistry professor at UCSD back in
1993. He’d denied any involvement, although he’d admitted to having met Adam
Collins at an academic function. He’d described them as friendly acquaintances,
if not friends. Nothing in his interviews made me think he was lying, and the
SDPD had come to the same conclusion. Lewis had even been out of the country at
the time of the bombing; there was no way he could have placed the bomb
himself, although I supposed he always could have had an associate do it. That
was going outside the bounds of things that were very likely, though.

Two
other suspects were a married couple who had gone on from their activist days
to become economics professors at SDSU. Again, the police had found nothing to make
them suspect they’d been involved. The same held true for a fourth suspect who
had gone from activism to running a hedge fund in La Jolla. Apparently he’d
decided that if you can’t beat the man, you join the man.

Other
than the chemistry professor, nobody interviewed seemed to have been questioned
for any reason other than their counterculture pasts. The cops had really been
grasping at straws with this one.

I took
out my laptop and looked up Michael Lewis online. There wasn’t a great deal. I
found a biography in a scientific journal he’d been published in that said he’d
retired in 2002. There was a brief notation that he’d been part of a group
called the Young American Socialists during the 60’s, but the name didn’t mean
anything to me. They’d either kept a low profile or were very bad at publicity.

Searching
for information on the group didn’t turn up much, either. They’d been involved
in a few protest marches against the Vietnam War, but that seemed to be about
it. They’d been among a number of groups suspected of planting a pipe bomb
under a police car in 1968, but the bomb had turned out to be a dud. It seemed
like a chemistry professor would be better at blowing things up than that.

The
Young American Socialists had ceased to exist by 1970. I’d have been
embarrassed to admit I’d had to look up what year the Vietnam War actually
ended, but luckily there was nobody around I had to admit it to.

It might
be worth looking up the professor and meeting him, just to get a sense of him.
I liked to think I was fairly good at catching people when they were lying to
me. If he knew anything about what had happened, maybe I could get it out of
him. That was a longshot at best, though. There was almost no reason to think
he’d been involved.

I spent
another hour looking through the case files, trying to come up with a plan of
action. After so many years, though, there wasn’t much to be done. I had no
crime scene to examine. There had been no witnesses and there was no security
camera footage to look through. Google probably kept track of people who
searched for things like “how to make pipe bombs,” but there had been no modern
Internet back then. Besides, gunpowder wasn’t hard to get a hold of. You could
even make it yourself if you knew how.

I looked
through the file until I came to the name of the lead investigator on the case:
Howard Lanford. I didn’t know him; that had been long before my time at the
SDPD. He’d almost certainly be retired by now, if he was still living. He’d be
a good starting point, though. I picked up my phone and nearly called Jason
London, but then I remembered he was supposed to be off buying a crate of
drugs. I dialed Miranda Callies instead, another cop from my A.A. group.
“Nevada?” she asked when she picked up. She sounded shocked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s
wrong,” I said. “Why?”

“Well…you’ve
never actually called me before.”

“Oh.” I
thought about that. I hadn’t been keeping track, but I guessed I hadn’t. “So,”
I said. “What’s new?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah,”
I said. “Me, too. Is that enough small talk? I’m never sure. Hey, how about
those Chargers?”

“I’m a
Raiders fan,” she said. “Fine, enough small talk. What’s going on?”

I told
her I was looking into an old case and needed to contact Howard Lanford. “He’s
probably retired,” I said. “If you can get me a current number and an address,
that would be good.”

“He’ll
be in the union directory,” she said. I heard her typing.

“So…how
are things in the gang unit?”

“You
really don’t have to make small talk, Nevada. I just figured for you to pick up
the phone it had to be an emergency. I’m glad it’s not, though. Okay, here it
is.” She gave me a phone number, which I wrote down. “His last known address is
in Scripps Ranch. Looks like he retired in 2005.”

I wrote
down the address and tried to think of some more small talk, but I didn’t have
anything good. I didn’t know anything about Miranda other than what she shared
at meetings, and it hardly seemed appropriate to bring any of that up.
“Thanks,” I said.

“No
problem. See you when I see you.”

We hung
up. I was secretly glad she hadn’t brought up going to an A.A. meeting. It felt
like a small victory. A small, stupid victory, but a victory nonetheless.

I was
getting ready to call Howard Lanford when my phone rang. Dan Evans was on my
caller ID. “What?” I answered.

“Always
nice to hear your voice, Nevada,” he said.

“Sorry,”
I said. “Hi, Dan. How are you? I’m fine. How about that sports team you like,
that does all the sportsing? How are they doing?”

“Forget
it,” he said. “Look, I want you to hear this from me before you see it on the
news. We’ve got another body.”

“The
copycat? Did the Laughing Man already catch up with him.”

“No,
it’s another victim.” He paused. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you
Nevada, but I think you should take a look.”

“I’m
busy with all the things,” I said.

“Nevada…”

“These
things aren’t just going to do themselves, Dan.”

“For
god’s sake, will you come take a look at this?”

“I don’t
know,” I said. “When I see the body and don’t start wailing are you going to
give me a bunch of shit about how I don’t react to things enough?”

He
didn’t say anything for a minute, but from his breathing I could tell he was
trying to keep from losing his temper. “Fine,” he said finally. “I’m not going
to give you shit. Maybe I was wrong to give you shit before.”

“You
think?”

“Don’t
push it, Nevada. I’m not apologizing for caring about you.”

He’d
gone for his trump card. “I guess all these things can wait for later,” I said.
“Give me an address.”

He gave
it to me. “Look, Nevada, this is just a heads up. This one isn’t like the last
one. I think you’re going to react this time.”

“I don’t
know,” I said. “I’m pretty hard to impress.”